Unscheduled detachment of a transient peripheral device (for example, a transient storage device) from a host computer during file transfer is a likely event in the art of digital computing, and is liable to cause damage to the data in the computer and/or in the peripheral device.
For the present disclosure, a “Transient Peripheral Device” refers to a reversibly attachable peripheral device—i.e. either reversibly attachable to a port (i.e. plug or socket) of the housing of the host device or reversibly attachable via some sort of mediating external cable or external cradle. Transient peripheral devices often communicate with their hosts using a ‘master-slave’ communications protocol that has a ‘host side’ and a ‘peripheral side.’ One example of such a protocol is the USB protocol.
One example of a “Transient Peripheral device” is a ‘Transient Storage Device’ (TSD)—i.e. a transient peripheral device that includes non-volatile memory on which data received from the host may be stored and subsequently read back to the host. One example of a TSD is a UFD (USB flash drive) such as the Cruzer® flash drive from SanDisk Corporation (Milpitas, Calif.). USB flash drives provide a convenient medium for the storage of user files and for the transfer of these files between different computers.
One type of damage caused by such unscheduled detachment is data corruption in the file transfer target device. Another type of damage is loss of data due to a wrong user assumption that data has been backed up on the other device, when it has not. The Windows operating system available from Microsoft Corporation offers interactive means for preventing such damage, however this means does not protect the system from accidental premature withdrawal of a TSD.
Typically, a TSD is detached from a computer manually—the user grasps the TSD using his hand and pulls it out. This gesture of pulling out the TSD comprises a sequence of movements, some of which take place before the actual detachment occurs.